[Koha] Community Feedback

[Chris Cormack]

On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 6:51 AM, paul POULAIN <paul.poulain at biblibre.com> wrote:
> Joe Atzberger a écrit :
>>
>>     I don't think it accurate to say that there are many people
>>     working on Koha for free.
>>
>>
>> Indeed, these stats bear that out:
>> http://www.ohloh.net/p/1541/contributors
>>
>
> interesting stat, that proves the multiple origin of Koha :
> - me, laurenthdl & toins (BibLibre)
> - chris C (previously katipo, now catalyst)
> - owen (NPL)
> - kados, galen, atz, rych (LibLime)
> - acli
> - many others
>
> In fact, if i'm not mistaken, the 2nd interesting point in this list is
> that the only contributors that were not support companies are : owen
> (and he's a unique case I think), acli, steve tonnesen, and wolfpack444

Theres a lot more than that.
The whole C4::Context module was done by arensberger.
arensb	163 commits


> Apologizes if I'm wrong, but none of them (except owen, of course) are
> still active for years.

This is mostly true.

> I'm sure that, to the -notable- exception of owen, for 3 years, the 10
> first committers are LibLimers and BibLibreros[*] ! (/me dunno how to
> count chris C., as he has been a liblimer partially during this period)
>
And done plenty outside work time. Im sure this is the case for you,
HDL, lots of the liblimers as well.
A salary only covers a certain number of hours a week. I always worked
on Koha more than those hours. So you can't count all of those paid
for.
Speaking only for myself, I have worked more unpaid hours on Koha than
I have paid ones. I bet this is the case for others also.

> We see here a change in Koha model. You can think/find it's a shame, but
> I think that Koha is now too complex (from a functionnal point of view)
> to have ppl involved on a "spare time" contribution basis.
>
> Learning koha internals + librarian terms + zebra + ... is not a small
> thing !
>
ANd this is a shame, because some of the biggest advances we have
gotten (C4::Context originally) have come from spare time programmers.
Or web based Circulation from Steve Tonnessen who was paid to run
school libraries, not code for Koha.

Chris